Well here are some results for the Vargas Stage III upgrade that has caused the N54 forum section to basically be engaged in chaos for the past few months. From accusations of vaporware, to comparison to single turbo upgrades, to countless other arguments the day has come and the Stage III Vargas Turbo upgrade dyno'd on 91 octane with no meth 572 horsepower to the rear wheels. This is with a Cobb flash tuned by BimmerBoost vendor Pro-Tuning Freaks.

Impressive? Yep, sure is and this seems to also be a 91 octane pump gas only world record for the N54. Now keep in mind this is just the beginning. What will it do with meth? What will do on E85? What will it do with race gas and big boost? What about different turbos? Sky appears to be the limit but for now this kind of performance on pump gas sure is a big boost (hah, get it?) to the N54 scene.

Congratulations to all involved, Vargas Turbo Tech, Pro-Tuning Freaks, Cobb, and just the N54 community as well. The impossible just became possible. Pictures, video, and dynograph below.

The Vishnu version of Roman for ESS. You would expect in today's internet driven society (especially with the forums/Facebook/Twitter/YouTube videos), every major vendor would have someone to exclusively to focus on social media & product awareness/marketing

You can't fix stupid......the problem is he really thinks he's helping by posting about spool characteristics, features his products have etc...

Some people sell by making a good / reputable / desirable product....other people sell by slander and putting the competition down, the latter doesn't work in the long run

I get better results lately doing a "fs <insert product here>" search on Google when I'm looking for something, you can even set it up to email you every morning with the results. We have 7-10 different BMW forums for the N54 floating around, I've bought stuff from people on 5 of them or so. e90post has pretty regular classified listings, but they also have a $#@!-ton more users to contend with to get that stuff

The curious thing, at least on 6AT, the stock sport suspension actually squats better at the drag strip / highway than an upgraded one. Around the corners its a sloppy whore. soft suspension ftw.

I still think it'd help to swap out the bushings and such; which is what I want to do prior to the Stage 3s. I've got Eibachs+Bilsteins on my E92 and I really like the ride height plus the way it takes corners provided there's no crazy bumps. For drag racing, the squat it has is great; it just gets a little scary when that subframe starts wiggling around

With the suspension, the OEM Sport Package setup is really good. BUT these cars are now somewhere between 3-6 years old and the suspensions are gonna start needing some love on the older cars (the bushings/springs), so going to a reasonable coilover setup isn't a bad choice vs. replacing the OEM bits

Well to put it back on track; it appears from a lot of data browsing, that the 67R spool rate won't be all that significant at all vs the 63R.

+1

Same exhaust housing, same turbine wheel...the difference between the 60, 63 and 67R are compressor sizes...spool will differ if you change the exhaust side...i'm starting to lean more and more towards the 67R..not made up my mind yet

Same exhaust housing, same turbine wheel...the difference between the 60, 63 and 67R are compressor sizes...spool will differ if you change the exhaust side...i'm starting to lean more and more towards the 67R..not made up my mind yet

Same exhaust housing, same turbine wheel...the difference between the 60, 63 and 67R are compressor sizes...spool will differ if you change the exhaust side...i'm starting to lean more and more towards the 67R..not made up my mind yet

Well different question. Will the exhaust side used here match up well with the 67R? To get 800-900whp (fuel system concerns aside), is it going to be straining it?

Well different question. Will the exhaust side used here match up well with the 67R? To get 800-900whp (fuel system concerns aside), is it going to be straining it?

Good question. I guess Garret knows what they're doing and designs those turbos to flow the advertised amount of air without having them destroyed...one thing to do is to go through the 67R compressor map and see how it matches up with the displacement on our motor...if too big it might be experiencing surging issues and require the tuning to be toned down and force tuning to only go 100% on the wg once later in the RPMs (in other words tune-induced lag)...i doubt this to be the case but it'll be worth checking into

Here's some calculations I'm using, figuring out the lbs/min the N54 flows at different RPMs. I'm assuming 100% VE, and that might be incorrect, but assuming with the Double VANOS and high CR and DI; it might be a good assumption. Correct me if I'm wrong. Since this is a twin setup, we have to halve the displacement values. This is assuming 14.7psi for now. I'll crank it up later, just looking for spool characteristics right now.
RPM lbs/min
2000 - 7.4
3000 - 11.1
4000 - 14.9
5000 - 18.6
6000 - 22.3
7000 - 26

So far I've changed my order from the gt28rs to the gtx2860 but if the spool up won't be much different going up to the 63 or 67 I may have to reconsider again! All I want is a reliable 650whp on e85/meth. My stock turbos don't really kick in hard until 4k anyway so as long as the gtx2860 is around there ill be happy.

Dzenno, do you think the torque curve would be flatter if you had run 18-19psi and run some timing? I'm assuming from what you said (which may be wrong of course) that you're running 24-25psi and 0 degrees advance or less...

What would the torque curve look like at 18psi and 8-9 degrees advance? Would you tune in more "conventionally" in that sense on 93-94 octane?

On ACN 91 you just can't use timing to make power, period. Keeping timing ultra low while raising boost works out better (and much safer) on that octane. This means you're capped pretty low on timing and you can shape your torque curve with boost. That'd mean lowering boost down low and tapering it up towards redline, basically what Shiv's current boost ramp up approach.

So far I've changed my order from the gt28rs to the gtx2860 but if the spool up won't be much different going up to the 63 or 67 I may have to reconsider again! All I want is a reliable 650whp on e85/meth. My stock turbos don't really kick in hard until 4k anyway so as long as the gtx2860 is around there ill be happy.

On ACN 91 you just can't use timing to make power, period. Keeping timing ultra low while raising boost works out better (and much safer) on that octane. This means you're capped pretty low on timing and you can shape your torque curve with boost. That'd mean lowering boost down low and tapering it up towards redline, basically what Shiv's current boost ramp up approach.

Right but I get 93-94 octane (and E85) here so I'm wondering how different it would look with less boost and more timing. Less torque falloff on the high end, less boost so it would plateau earlier, etc.

Right but I get 93-94 octane (and E85) here so I'm wondering how different it would look with less boost and more timing. Less torque falloff on the high end, less boost so it would plateau earlier, etc.

Thanks

The beauty of larger lungs is you can target whatever shape of the curve you want with enough octane in the tank. PEAK power/torque for the moment are limited by the HPFP past a certain point without supplementing with meth. "Hopefully" this will be history soon too and the N54 platfrom will be able to not depend on meth delivered through the charge piping for high hp fueling soon as much as it does today. Fingers crossed..

If I were to use meth to fuel 700whp today it wouldn't be the typical nozzles in the charge pipe setup. It'd most likely be direct port with nozzles on the intake manifold runners with a distribution block in front, new Aquamist checkvalved nozzles and PWM.